Sunday, September 05, 2010

How else do describe Thomas Perez, the aggressive head of Obama’s Civil Rights division:

Perez is playing a leading role in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona’s new immigration law. He is promising a huge increase in prosecution of alleged hate crimes. He vows to use “disparate impact theory” to pursue discrimination cases where there is no intent to discriminate but a difference in results, such as in test scores or mortgage lending, that Perez wants to change. He is even considering a crackdown on Web sites on the theory that the Internet is a “public accommodation” as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

To do all this, Perez has come up with some novel ideas. For example, in a recent lending discrimination case, he forced the defendant—who settled the case without admitting any wrongdoing—to pay not only the alleged victims but to funnel $1 million to unrelated “qualified organizations” to conduct social programs.

Perez is pushing just as hard on smaller issues. In a little-noticed move last year, he threatened several universities because they took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks. At the time, the Kindle was not fully accessible to blind students, and under pressure from Perez the schools agreed not to offer the e-reader to any students until it was fully accessible to all.

Note the middle paragraph, in which Perez is essentially using the power of government to blackmail his targets into donating to “qualified organizations” (a tactic that started under the last Administration). It’s not clear who these “qualified organizations” are. But I somehow doubt they are non-partisan or apolitical.

When Obama was elected, I said we could judge him by the kind of people he surrounded himself with. Well, Perez is just one of a number of kooks he’s put into key positions. Anyone who, according to the article, talks about how much he loves his job and how much power he has shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near power.